It is hot here in the Barrio. The sun is beating down. The fireworks have been popping since around June 20th which I guess is when Mexican 4th of July actually starts. I’m looking forward to doing what I always do tonight which is stand in my front yard or getting up on my roof and watching the neighborhood spontaneously pop and glimmer in different places to varying degrees of intensity. I don’t really feel that connected to the holiday. I am glad we are here but I feel a lot of distance from the original event obviously. I do enjoy watching things blow up in the air as long as they are fun explosions.

I remember when I was a kid and I was hanging around with some of the more sadistic kids in that weird weekend Independence Day haze of boredom. We had firecrackers which were very hard to come by. Some sick kid had somehow gotten hold of a brick of Black Cats. So, naturally they wanted to take a couple and try to blow up a frog which were plentiful down along the ditches of the NW valley in Albuquerque. I had a couple that lived in my back yard. Because of the weird reality that is peer pressure and my desire to be seen as cool by the psychopathic kids I offered up the idea to blow up one of the frogs in my backyard. I remember finding one and the watching the bad kid trying to figure out how to do it. The method you always heard was to stick the firecracker in the frogs ass or mouth. That proved to be difficult. So, mean bad sick kid just held the frog, put a firecracker under it, lit it and we all jumped back. It popped and the frog just hopped off quickly shy a couple of toes. I felt awful. I told the kids to leave and went to look for the injured frog. I couldn’t find it then but it showed up a week or two later healed up. I called him Stubby from that day on. He lived a good long life before he ended up bloated and dead in the pool filter. How’s that for an Independence Day story? Long live Stubby! God bless America!

This week’s shows are deep and funny. On Monday comedian Nick Thune and I hash out some tensions and then talk Jesus…for reals. On Thursday one of the founding writers of The Onion talks about that history of that publication and also delves deep into living with paralyzing depression. These were great talks. I hope you dig them.